Unlike Evirus' wholly voluntary rankings, Schneider attempted to establish a rigorous system. There was just one problem: I did not see an explanation, if any even existed, until now. But here's how it works. At every episode Schneider establishes the rostrum with 3 winners. The top idol gets 3 points, second gets 2 points, and the third gets 1 point. Points count towards the idol championship, same way as it happens in motor racing, for example. What this buys us is a fairer system that favours consistency. The top idols are largely uncontroversial at any given episode. Note, however, that Miki is still in the lead in Schneider's roster with 14 points, as she would in any other system. Chihaiya is second with 12 points. The surprise only happens with Iori, who boasts 11 points.

I am a bit inclined towards these rankings, I admit. For example, I run an invisible anime blog rankings system with my feedreader. For every "good" post which was worth reading, a blog moves up a rung, displacing someone else. Unfortunately, the result was rather poor. Good blogs take too much time to float up. For example, Peterburd is still #55 after his return from China. Also, two or three blogs can easily form a clump when they exchange blows and not make overall progress up. I keep thinking about some kind of timeslot based system for blogs, but it does not gel.

In contrast, Schneider's idol ranking is rather successful. It produces a predictable result (albeit favouring steady over epic), which generally agreed with informal weighted and voted ranks. It does make sense. What he needs is a dashboard and a FAQ on the front page of the blog.